Who Should I Start? Cade Stover or AJ Barner

Wednesday, January 21, 8:44 PM

Houston Texans tight end Cade Stover's (knee) MRI exam showed no damage to his ACL, a league source told Aaron Wilson of KPRC2 Sports. Stover was unable to make much happen after fellow tight end Dalton Schultz (calf) left the Divisional Round loss to the New England Patriots before getting hurt himself in the fourth quarter. The 25-year-old caught one of his three targets for only two yards. The good news is that Stover should be a full-go for training camp in the summer and for Week 1 of the regular season in the fall. In his second year in the league, the former fourth-rounder caught just 12 passes for 76 yards and no touchdowns on 16 targets in nine regular-season games. As long as Schultz is healthy going into the start of the season, Stover won't be fantasy relevant. He had a 15-133-1 line in 15 games in 2024 in his rookie campaign.

Monday, January 26, 12:57 PM

Seattle Seahawks tight end AJ Barner has been very quiet in the team's two playoff wins, as he caught just two of his three targets for 13 yards in Sunday's 31-27 win over the division-rival Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship. It was better than Barner's donut for fantasy managers in the blowout win over the San Francisco 49ers in the Divisional Round, but it still was a disappointment. Quarterback Sam Darnold targeted Barner only three times among his 36 pass attempts on the day in a game that featured plenty of offense on both sides. The 23-year-old second-year tight end was the TE14 in half-PPR scoring during the regular season, catching 52 of his 68 targets for 519 yards and six touchdowns, and he remains mostly reliant on finding the end zone for fantasy production. For the Super Bowl in two weeks, Barner could face competition for targets from rookie Elijah Arroyo, who was a healthy scratch on Sunday after coming off Injured Reserve last week.